them for everything. Doubtless some laughed, some who knew him well pitied him. And many only pretended to pity him.
Then again he also walked with the musicians, and when he came into some village and stood on the green, he inquired whether they had any vejminkar there that he might have a look at him; or said he, “Let the vejminkar be brought to me on the green, and we will come to an understanding about everything.” And more to the same effect. Soon old Loyka belonged to the roving figures of the neighbourhood about whom people talk or do not talk, whom we half-laugh at and do not laugh at, who add a peculiar feature to those districts much as the eagle adds a character to the woodland above which it wanders lonely, and above which it utters from time to time a cry which pierces to the bones.
And so Frank led his father to all the places with which he had previously become acquainted through his own vagabond’s mode of life.
In some places, too, the respectable portion of the citizens came out to meet them, inviting old Loyka for friendship’s sake into their houses, for, in truth, Loyka had been the best-known and most highly respected man of the neighbourhood. But Loyka never accepted such invitations, though modestly thanking his friends for all their kind intentions. “I never go on to any farmstead”, he would say. “I thank you, neighbours, most respectfully. Leave me any place where there is no farmstead, and I have enough for my poor wants.”
If there was a cross anywhere on the village green, Loyka posted himself beside it, and when the people began to flock around him, he pointed to the Christus, and said, “Here ye behold Him”, and then he pointed to himself, and said, “and here ye behold me. He yonder bore His cross only once to Calvary, but I bear mine continually. But the hangman’s servants martyred Him, me my own son martyred because I gave him my estate.”
At other times again he cried, “Wherefore do ye wonder that I go from village to village? Here ye behold a man crucified upon a cross! He also wandered about in the world and no one hindered Him. Why do ye hinder me?”
Also Frank led his father away into the woodland, and once a fiddler whom they happened to meet at the outskirts of the wood accompanied them to the well-known ravines. Never in its life, perhaps, had that rocky glen entertained such a fantastic group as
